I've walked out of restaurants that weren't capable of serving food at the same time. When I go out to eat with my wife, it's so we can eat together. Any chef who can't manage that isn't worthy of the title.

How do you handle restaurants in Asia? My experience is that food not coming out at once is the norm, not the exception.

When you take a member of the opposite sex to dinner and your plate arrives alone, do you eat it all up while she sits and watches?

In China, where most of my Asian experience lies, dishes are communal so it is not an issue.

No, you call for the maitre d' or the manager and ask for some logical explanation (of which there may be one, but I ain't heard many in a long career of asking).

Other than in the case of special food orders or extra courses for one or more diners, inability to serve courses for all at the table simultaneously is a grievous fault. I won't even accept a total re-do of an unsatisfactorily prepared dish, wanting it removed from the bill (and if we're just two dining, I want the entire bill removed, or at least the full cost of the course for which one example was poorly done).

If a few more diners were simply willing to get up and walk out the door, some, no many restaurants would do better. I'm no "Ramsey", but I was a newspaper food critic for 5 years, and have witnessed too much atrocious treatment of folks paying for food to be very tolerant of chefs, kitchens and waitstaff incapable of coordinating service.

If there's problem, I want the server (or someone higher up) to come and tell me about it, and act upon my response which will be graduated based on my perception of how it will alter my dining pleasure.

I would agree w/most of this. A well run kitchen w/good chefs shouldn't have too much of a problem getting all the plates for a table to the runner in a short window of time... unless they've really fallen into the weeds. I would argue that the very best of the restaurants and chefs do not use IR heaters though.

And yes, much of the key is precooking/staging some of the dishes during the 3-5 o'clock hours so that they only have to be 'finished' as the orders come in.

If your date is worth enough to you, I assume you are spending your $$$ at a restaurant that is at least pretty good. Of those restaurants, I would assume that something like this would happen VERY rarely. That is a major faux pa. One of the worst of 'em and they won't let it happen.

i have been in a number of 2 &3* kitchens in France. they all had and used IR warmers to hold food temps.

Is that a minor faux pas?

For me, an allowable wait would be one for the server to go right back into the kitchen to pick up the remaining plate(s) and return, which should be a proposition lasting not more than 1 to 2 minutes. For non-communal dining, anything more is really not acceptable.

I think it happens more often than you think -- and the politeness issue remains whether you are dining at L'Aureole or California Pizza Kitchen.

That is for sure. Consumers get intimidated into accepting bad products and services in the fine-dining business more than any other business. I think it is harder to get satisfaction in linen-and-crystal places, in fact, than modest chain places.

I found Asian restaurants in Asia were very poor at serving "Western" meals, because the Asian custom is to serve food in series, not in parallel. We had 10 people at a dinner, and it was 20 minutes from the first person's meal to the last.

The OPs query stated 6 to 8 people at the table, not 2. Big difference.

Just as important as the food being delicious.

the way the game is played, is that most appetisers are pretty much premade, only need to be wacked for a few minutes. they all come out at once. in the mean time, the main courses can be generated. the first done lays around someplace until the all are done, and then the serving wench hauls them out. if a high quality restaurant, two people haul them out.

from reading threads in dining, it appears that the majority of the people eat steak, or "american" food, no matter where. banging out 8 steaks and 8 baked potatoes is a piece of cake. trust me, the potatoes are pre cooked, and usually, so are the steaks.

the greatest meals that i have had are either in french countryside 2*'s (or equivalent) where small courses of many different foods just arrived, or almost any italian restaurant where again, food arrived very piecemeal.

the same has been true in southeast asian restaurants in london(includes indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani)

In a non-communal dining situation at a decent restaurant, I would only tolerate about a minute delay: about the time for the server(s) to walk back to the pass and bring back the missing plate(s). Any decent chef or expediter will wait to send out the plates in parallel. Many restaurants will use heat lamps. Some top restaurants will refuse, and instead refire dishes if they sit too long while waiting for a delinquent cook to finish something.

I guess I usually dine at decent Western restaurants, so I can't remember the last time I've experienced this particular problem.